


Mandelbrot Equation

by SharpestRose



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dooku finds the pattern in things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mandelbrot Equation

Obi-Wan could feel Dooku, elegant and deft as a dancer, slip into his mind and move through the memories. The images shuffled past like pages quickly turned in a book, hard-dark-stone and then funny-silly-laughter and then sore-tired-happy and then sharp-gleaming-cut and then slick-hot-skin, years of life chopped into individual sensations and emotions.

"Ah, Qui-Gon, you never could resist the beautiful ones." Dooku said with a low chuckle, pausing on the memory, almost seventeen years old now, of a strong mouth against Obi-Wan's, a tongue that tasted of green leaves and tart, almost-ripe fruit. Obi-Wan's lips parted involuntarily, his breath caught captive by the feeling of that first kiss. Then his jaw clenched and he pushed with all his might, forcing Dooku out of his head.

"Those are not yours to see." he snapped. Dooku just laughed harder.

-

 _He was twenty years old, the first time he fell in love. Her eyes were yellow-irised and round, her skin hot as coal to touch in the dark._

-

Dooku left Obi-Wan in his prison and went back to his rooms, the space he called home. It seemed ridiculous, really, since he was equally at ease wherever he went, but convention demanded that he call some space his own even when nothing and everything was equally belonging to him, just as he belonged to it.

There was a large holo image on one wall, constantly shifting without ever really changing. Fractals, the Mandelbrot equation. The same sequence over and over no matter how closely you looked at it, numbers inside numbers. Viewed from a distance, the image seemed to make a deeply profound sense of everything. It was soothing to watch.

Dooku sat down, turning the memories over in his head like smooth stones, letting most of Obi-Wan's fall aside and his own surface once more. Moments from his life, winding back to when he had been almost a baby. Sitting in the corner of the creche when all the other children had gone to lessons, crying into his hands. Nothing had made sense, then.

-

 _It was even lonelier with people close._

-

"Want Mummy." he mumbled, giving a small indignant sniff and rubbing one fat knuckle into the corner or his eye.

"Wanting your mother are you, hmm?" Yoda hobbled over and sat down beside the boy. "Many friends here to play with, much to learn. Belong here, you do, youngling."

"No. I want Mummy. I want a hug." With another sniff and a waver in the words the tears threatened to start again.

"Mother to us all, the Force is. Feel it when you close your eyes, know that you are loved and needed always."

"That Force... the Force loves me?" The Force had seemed a distant, austere concept, a stern father shut away in a library, not a mother to soothe hurts.

"The Force." Yoda paused, smiling, and waved one gnarled green hand. A soft grey felt blanket lifted itself off the floor and draped around the toddler's shoulders, one corner tickling at his feet gently. The boy giggled, and Yoda's smile grew wider.

"All things, the Force is. Love, joy, peace."

"Is it bad things, too?"

Yoda nodded, not hiding anything but not elaborating either.

"How can it be both?"

"When older you are, clearer things will be."

-

 _Looking at the sun can injure the eyes. Watching the stars hurts even more._

-

Life was a gift from which he drew all the knowledge and experience he could. And then there was Qui-Gon, who was all lanky golden limbs and sweet, calm eyes, asking so many questions.

Not easy questions, either, complex and complicated queries. Why does the hawk kill the rabbit? So if the rabbit doesn't die the hawk will? The Force permits, is designed for, this cycle?

And the beautiful clarity slipped away like a summer storm. Qui-Gon found answers of his own, but for the lad's mentor the natural reason for everything was gone.

-

 _Years pass and food tastes different, tastes changing. Maybe it's him changing. There are new lines on his face each time he catches sight of his reflection._

-

Xanatos and Qui-Gon were ill-matched as Padawan and Master. The tension sparked between them, not a week went by without a fight, an argument without resolution. It was impossible not to see that the two men were lovers almost from the moment Xanatos was old enough, and the intimacy made their clashes even fireier. It seemed they could agree about nothing.

Through witnessing year after year of these small wars, things became clear again. A paradigm shift occurred. His old perceptions had been clear as glass, that was shattered and gone now but the edges left were sharp and strong and painfully simple.

-

 _Strong winds seem to carry songs and whispers from long-lost voices to his ears in the twilight. He likes to wait for dawn. Dark, light, it's a cycle that repeats and repeats again._

-

Obi-Wan had not agreed with many of his Master's teachings, but unlike Xanatos these differences in point of view didn't mean inevitable argument to Obi-Wan. Student and teacher were matched utterly, it seemed that they were born to the Jedi life in a way that capitalistic, impulsive Xanatos and questioning, ruthless Dooku were not. Had never been, really.

-

 _He hates the sand and fears the water._

-

Obi-Wan and Anakin came from such different points of opinion on everything that they would never fully resolve. Obi-Wan's thoughts and memories were filled with love for the boy, but exasperation as well, and worry.

Anakin loved a dark-eyed girl who never cried for her own pain, and Obi-Wan's heart was ever-waiting for the someday when it would join its twin beyond this life. Amidala and Qui-Gon were a space between Padawan and Master. For good or ill, Dooku could not tell.

Good, ill, they were all parts of the same Force, which Dooku served and obeyed with every piece of himself. It was all a cycle, everything connected. If you moved far enough away from the pattern, it all made perfect sense.


End file.
